What’s Constantin doing now?

A surreal landscape where rainbow-colored piano keyboards form winding bridges and pathways through towering sandstone canyon walls. In the center, a large green tree grows from a circular rainbow platform, with a brown dachshund standing nearby. Electric vehicles float impossibly in the bright blue sky like colorful flying cars - red, yellow, and other vibrant colors suspended in mid-air. Musical notes drift through the scene. The keyboard bridges curve and spiral through the canyon architecture in impossible ways, their black and white keys clearly visible against the rainbow-striped surfaces. A small human figure can be seen on one of the distant platforms. The entire scene combines elements of music, technology, and nature in a dreamlike composition with warm lighting and a sense of infinite possibility.

(This is a Now page. If you like the concept, why not set up one for yourself, too?)

Updated June 30th, 2025. (Older version: 2025-06-11.)

In no particular order. Also, this page was not written by AI – I just happen to like emojis and proper emdashes.

Blogging more often👨🏻‍💻

After quitting my job at AWS, refactoring my blog, I’m still tweaking some of its bits, like adding Webmention support and creating an animated banner. Now, I’ll focus more on writing articles about productivity and personal development or interesting tech topics. This will become my main corner of the internet for everything I do, including setting up some form of freelancing or consulting offer. I continue learned about the IndieWeb, and I’m currently thinking of adding GitHub-based commenting system as well.

Learning how to educate our dachshund Elvis 🐾

TL;DR: You can’t 😀.

Well, they have a strong personality, which is a good thing! So now, we’re learning how to at least influence them. Elvis is super sweet and adorable, he’s also entering puberty, so, fun times ahead!

But he’s making progress! He doesn’t bark at other dogs as much as he used to, and the constant pulling at the leash is starting to become more, let’s say, controlled.

I also learned: You don’t walk a dachshund. Dachshunds take their can openers out for a walk…

Researching electric vehicles 🚗

We currently own a 16 year old VW Polo. I’d love to upgrade it to an electric vehicle. So far, I’ve tested a few rentals: I love the Polestar 2, and it’s my current favourite, but it’s also pricey. I once got a Lucid Air as an uprade to the Polestar 2 I reserved. It’s a great car, but the electronics felt a bit buggy, probably teething issues. Too big and to expensive for our needs. We also rented an MG4 for a mini vacation. It’s nice, but the boot space is small for a family of four and a dog, the dashboard feels like it’s just two bolted on tablets, and the UX isn’t super great (you need to activate 1-pedal driving at every single trip).

The evolution in this space is still quite fast, and the market dynamics change all the time. Today’s best choice might be obsolete in a year. Also, the big upfront cost for any decent EV is a bit of a blocker—I’d rather use the money for investing instead of watching the value of my car depreciate 50% in 3 years. Even with current leasing factors of .7, leasing looks like an attractive option over buying new. Perhaps I’ll go with a long-term car rental model for a year or more or some kind of leasing after all.

Still reading “Tiny Experiments”, by Anne-Laure LeCunff 📕

Amazon’s recommendation system is really good: It suggested Tiny Experiments, by Anne-Laure LeCunff right now, as I’m redesigning the next chapter of my professional life. So far it has resonated a lot with what I’ve always felt about traditional goals (meh), seeing the big picture of things, and focusing on the quality of how we spend our time vs. optimizing the heck out of it.

One good thing about commuting is that you have time to read books. Now that I’m mostly at home, that time is missing, and I need to actually make time for reading.

Learning to Move 🎛️

Not the physical movement, but the new Groovebox by Ableton. It’s a very fun and powerful device and I’d like to use more of its potential, so I’m now using it whenever I make music with friends. I’ll also spend more time with it alone to learn the ins and outs. I recently bought a CME WIDI Bud Pro—a MIDI-over-Bluetooth interface that’s compatible with my Move, so I can connect it to my laptop and Ableton Live running on it. Let’s see what I can do with this combo!

Work out more 🦶

My go-to workout option is barefoot running. Now that I have a bit more time, I’ll do this more often, and also add some strength training to it. I like Apple Fitness, so will probably spend more time with it.

That’s it! I’m adding a reminder to myself to regularly update this page. What are you doing now?